Currently, mobile devices such as smartphones, notebook and laptop computers, PDAs (personal digital assistants), tablet computing devices, and so forth, are becoming extremely prolific, and are extensively used to provide convenient storage and/or viewing of various documents and data. Such devices are able to store the documents and data of the user, and allow the user to access such information in many different locations. When users with such mobile devices wish to print documents, files or other information stored on the mobile devices, information is transmitted within a print aware mobile application using an operating system resident print client subsystem or by a dedicated print client mobile application, to a print device directly or through an intermediate processing device.
These, and numerous other functionalities, are generally performed by software applications either in the form of software components that are built-in to the device's mobile operating system (OS) or separate mobile applications (mobile apps) that run on top of the operating system. A variety of mobile applications have been developed that enable direct transmission of data from a mobile device to a print device. However, such mobile applications often require extensive modifications to the mobile operating system (OS) as well as the print device, and hence need to be OS and device specific. Such modifications allow the mobile application to, for example, identify documents being viewed by other applications and selecting them to be transmitted to the print device.
Such modifications are necessary because of “sandboxing” on mobile platforms. Various OSs enforce security between mobile applications such that one mobile application cannot determine the state information of another application. Identity of a document being viewed in a mobile application is an example of state information which is not accessible to other applications. Hence, the only way to identify a document to be printed is for all the mobile applications to become print subsystem aware, i.e., as OS resident or as an add-on, by modifying the OS.
The current disclosure discloses a system and method to achieve desired tap-to-print functionality without requiring print device or mobile device modifications, by using features of both devices that are widely deployed and available.